


Knit Me Together - a handmaid's tale

by the_other_lutece_sister



Category: Orphan Black (TV), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Sestras, altrnate universe - non clones, propunk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:42:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9487622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_other_lutece_sister/pseuds/the_other_lutece_sister
Summary: In a 'futuristic' dystopia, resources are depleted, infertility is widespread, the extreme religious right have taken over the U.S, and women are denied agency and freedom -reduced to their roles of Wives, Marthas, and Handmaids.Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully madeI will be tagging various characters as they eventuate. Future chapters will be tagged for non-con situations.





	1. alone

**Author's Note:**

> soundtrack - Happy & Bleeding by PJ Harvey

The first moment of every morning was the same. She was still in the dormitory, and she would open her eyes and see her twin sister in the next bed looking back at her, and they would both reach out a hand and squeeze, quickly, before any of the Aunts saw them. They would have an entire conversation with their eyes in that moment.

 

Then she would remember where she was and why and what and when, and open her eyes and stare at the blank white ceiling, There was a tiny crack in the left-hand corner. If she stared at it hard enough, maybe she’d think of a way to fit through it. A way to find them. _Kira. Helena._

 

She heard footsteps outside the door. And further away, the sound of a cane thudding softly against carpet. It was time to face the day.

But she lay there looking at the crack in the ceiling for a moment longer.

 

It had been 745 days since she had seen Kira. _her hand had been so small in mine. how big is she now._ 270 days since she and Helena had been separated. _Running through the woods, hand in hand in hand, not fast enough._ Sarah often felt like she wasn’t really here, herself, she was just a body walking around, her heart and soul were elsewhere. The quiet was broken by a clock chiming somewhere in the house. She sighed and pushed the bedcovers away, sat up, her restless gaze falling on the single table, the single lamp, the single-doored wardrobe. She was hungry for colour, for variety, for change. Her clothes were laid out on the single chair. She clenched her fists briefly.

She was hungry for every colour except red.

 

Sarah gritted her teeth as she pulled on the long, flowing dress. Every inch of her rebelled against it, and she longed for the days when she could just roll out of bed and pull on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and her comfy old boots and go wherever she liked, do whatever the _hell_ she wanted. Her eyes skittered around the room. Even _thinking_ words like that got her nerves up these days. She hadn’t spotted a camera but she knew there was one in the room somewhere. They needed to keep watch. Accidents still happened, even without anything to tie a rope to.

 

The dress was red - the colour of blood, the colour of sacrifice, the colour of danger. The colour of Sin. It had long, full sleeves with zippered pockets sewn in, the skirt reached to the floor and billowed as she pulled it over her head. Red gloves, even in the heat. Then the headpiece - that was white, white wings surrounding her face, keeping it hidden as well as blocking her peripheral vision. Then the red shoes, flat, and definitely not made for dancing. The entire effect was that of a scarlet nun. Not that she’d seen herself. They weren’t allowed mirrors.

 

She walked over to the window (shatter-proof glass that only opened a few inches) and looked out into the garden. It was spring and flowers bloomed - roses, mostly. The house was famed for its rose garden. There was some movement under her window, and she drew back a little. A figure walked out onto the lawn, dressed in blue.

 Wives were blue.

 

One hand held a large sunhat, the other rested on an ivory cane. The morning sun glowed on her blonde hair and she moved steadily, if somewhat slowly, over to a cushioned wicker chair, and sat.

For a moment her head turned towards Sarah, and she stepped back again. It wasn’t against the rules for her to look at the garden...or maybe it was? There were so many rules these days. But the woman’s gaze merely moved over her and back to the garden, settling the hat on her head, and then pointing her cane towards one of the rose-beds, speaking to someone out of sight. Sarah moved, trying to get a better view, and saw the back of a tall man with shaggy hair and overalls. She bit her lip, tapped on the windowsill. The new gardener, then.

Her heart sank as she realised the woman in blue was looking up at her window again, her fingers tapping on the cane handle. _Shit,_ thought Sarah, and quickly moved away from the window. It was time she got going, anyway. It was shopping day.

 

The house was quiet, but it was that muffled, busy kind of quiet. There were faint sounds coming from the kitchen, and Sarah headed there, fingers restlessly tugging at the sleeves of her dress. She was getting better at walking in it, at least, although she still got caught in the skirt occasionally. The door swung inwards as she pushed gently, and she was met with two sets of eyes above dull green dresses.

Marthas were green.

 

Both the women fell silent as she entered, and Sarah suspected they had been whispering about her again. Her fingers found one of the zippers in her sleeves and fiddled with it, pulling it open and shut, open and shut.

“Mornin’.” she said, breaking the silence.

One of the Marthas nodded in response, the other murmured _good morning_ in return. Neither met her eyes. The shorter one - Sarah thought her name was Bonnie - rummaged in a drawer and pulled out the token book, then tore out three and thrust them at Sarah. She saw pictures of eggs, of cheese, of a sad brown shape that was supposed to be steak.

“Make sure the eggs are fresh this time,” Bonnie said curtly. “And a decent sized chicken. Tell ‘em who it’s for and they won’t mess around.” The other Martha nodded, her hands sinking into the dough she was kneading. Sarah made a noise of agreement, momentarily caught up in the rhythmic movement of the woman’s hands, then she blinked and put the tokens into her sleeve, where they sat alongside her identification pass. Grabbing the large basket from behind the door, she shouldered her way back out the door, pausing in the hallway and closing her eyes.

When she’d first arrived, Sarah had hoped for some camaraderie among the other women. They were all chafing under the new rule, surely, resentful of being forced back into roles they’d fought so hard to be liberated from. Instead, she’d found the Martha’s resentful of _her_ and her ‘favoured’ position. She’d overheard them calling it ‘easy work’. She’d wanted to scream at them, throw some plates, punch a wall, or a face. But they all knew what happened to anyone who was _difficult_...so she’d bit her tongue and nodded and smiled.  

Back in the dormitory, word had got around about the Marthas. It was best to stay on their good side. They were all links in the great chain of gossip between households, and were the best way to keep tabs on other Handmaids in the area. Sarah wasn’t sure where her sister was, but she knew, _knew,_ that she was alive and possibly not too far away.

She paused before the side door, the only door she was allowed to use, and laughed suddenly, covering her mouth as the laughter quickly became a swallowed sob. They were dressed exactly the same, now. They'd never dressed the same, ever - they didn't even grow up together. Sarah had spent years in the foster system, and Helena had ended up in an orphanage in the Ukraine, of all places. They'd turned out so different. And now...they were exactly the same.

Here she was in her red dress and plain white underwear, and somewhere was Helena, in the same red dress, the same plain underwear, the same flat red shoes. They were both Handmaids.

 

Handmaids were red.


	2. outside

The sun was bright and Sarah wanted to turn her face up to it. How she had taken it for granted, the feeling of the sun on her skin. Instead, she kept her eyes trained to the path, gravel crunching under her feet, the white wings shuttering her gaze. They said it was for their own protection - to keep their faces averted from the gaze of men, their modesty intact. Really, though, it was to keep them from seeing too much. Seeing led to wanting, and Handmaids could not _want_ , only serve.

She could smell freshly turned dirt and the delicate scent of the roses. They lined the side of the house, and the front yard as well. Risking a peek, she saw the nearest ones were as red as her gown.

Her nails dug into the basket handle, and she looked down again.

Stepping through the side gate, Sarah resisted the urge to slam it, instead letting it close with a soft _click._ She heard water running. The car sat in the driveway, as black and sleek as a hearse, and the driver was pointing the hose at it, rinsing off suds. He wore the military-green uniform of a Guardian, his face lined, and eyes sharp behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. There was a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

_Black market,_ thought Sarah. She stared at the cigarette, suddenly wanting one so bad she imagined she could hear the tobacco crackling as it burned. Like alcohol and coffee, it was forbidden to Handmaids.

The Guardian caught her gaze. He took a drag and then dropped the cigarette, grinding it into the trimmed lawn. Then he _winked_. Sarah froze, then panicked, dipping her head again and quickening her steps. She didn’t look up again until she’d passed through the front gate, and her heartbeat didn’t slow down until she was a block away.

_He could be an Eye_ . _He could be a friend. He could be an Eye._

She forced her feet to slow again. All she’d done was look at the cigarette. Even if he _was_ an Eye, he wouldn’t report her for something _that_ trivial. Would he? He may have thought she was looking at _him_. It could have just been a test, to see what she would do. Her fingers were white-knuckled around the wicker handle.

Finally she reached the crossroads, and stood, waiting. The length of the gown disguised the tapping of her foot as she impatiently waited for her escort. Sarah had always been bad at waiting. _They also serve who only stand and wait._ Her brow creased at the memory of the Aunt's voice. Movement caught her eye and she turned towards the red and white shape, the shape that looked exactly like her. Red gown, white wings, a basket in her hands.

She moved closer, until the two women looked at each other through the tunnel of their wings.

“Blessed be the fruit,” said the woman.

“May the Lord open,” replied Sarah, the words still feeling stiff and formal in her mouth. They both turned and started walking along the pavement, past other large houses, into the centre of town.

The woman had been her partner for two weeks now. Before that it had been different woman. Sarah didn’t know what had happened to her. You never knew, and there was no one to ask, and you probably didn’t want to hear the answer anyway.

The previous Ofglen had had a round face with startlingly green eyes. This Ofglen was a little shorter than Sarah, her eyes brown. She’d never said a word that could be construed as off-script...but then, neither had Sarah.

It was impossible to tell the true believers from the one’s merely paying lip service to survive. If there was some kind of code, or signal, Sarah didn’t know what it was. She was desperate for information. But she was no help to her sister or her daughter swinging on a rope.

Her legs ached to run.

But they walk, their shadows in front of them as if they can’t wait to get there first. Sarah casts her eyes up and sees the checkpoint in the distance, looks down, and chews her lip. A Martha was shot here a month ago. She had been fumbling in her robe for her identification and the Guardians thought she had a bomb. It happens sometimes. She fiddled with her sleeve pockets again, swallowing on a dry throat.

Ofglen spoke.

“The war is going well, I hear.”

“Praise be.” Sarah replied automatically, wanting the other woman’s voice to contain something other than than news about the holy war, something _real_.

“We’ve been sent good weather.”

Sarah sighed inwardly. “Which I receive with joy.”

“They’ve defeated more of the rebels.” Her voice rang with pride.

_Did she forget pride is a sin?_ wondered Sarah, before answering.

“Praise be.” _how do you know?_ “What were they?”

“Baptists. They smoked them out of a stronghold in the blue hills.”

“Praise be,” said Sarah obediently.

 

She often wondered if Helena found comfort in the religious aspect of this new life.

She hoped so.

 

The two of them had reached the checkpoint now - the barrier merely an old roadworks sign with yellow and black stripes and red flashing lights. There were floodlights off to the sides , attached to the telephone poles above two small pillboxes. The pillboxes contained men with machine guns. Sarah couldn’t see them, because of her wings, but she could feel their presence.

There were Guardians at the barrier, in their dusty green uniforms. The Guardians of the Faith weren’t real soldiers - mostly they were men who were too old, or disabled in some way, or too young.

Except for the ones who were Eyes. And you could never tell.

These two were young - once she would have tried to use that, to appeal to their still-teenaged hormones. But she’d learnt that sometimes the younger they were, the more fanatical, and the jumpier with their guns.

The Guardians saluted the two Handmaids in a small token of respect. Sarah’s mouth twisted in the privacy of her wings.

The women hand over their passes for inspection and one Guardian stamps them, while the other enters a pillbox to enter their identification numbers into the Compuchek. When their passes are handed back to them, the Guardian ducks a little to see Sarah’s face. She lifts her head slightly and meets his gaze, wondering what he would do if she smiled at him. She doesn’t, but keeps her eyes steady. His cheeks redden under the acne and he looks away first.

Sarah feels a sense of victory, then hates herself for it.

There’s no victory here, just boys with guns and women at their mercy.


	3. display

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah and Ofglen finish shopping and have encounters

They walked the rest of the way to the main street in silence. Sarah kept digging her teeth into her lips, keeping the words in, cluttering her throat. The effort she had to put into the slow gliding walk exhausted her. She wanted to move faster. She wanted to run. But the streets are quiet and her footsteps would echo and there were machine guns waiting and her dress was a target. So she glided along, doubled, the two of them a matched pair.

 

The air was so still, the houses so dollhouse-like, that the entire city felt like a museum a show of How Things Had Been and How They Should Be. They were in the heart of Gilead. The war couldn’t touch them here, but it was always with them. The borders ebbed and flowed, depending on attacks and counter-attacks. But this was the centre and the centre always held. Sarah could clearly hear the Aunt’s voice saying _the Republic of Gilead knows no bounds. Gilead is_ within _you._

 

Back in the dormitories, she’d wanted to laugh at them, to argue. But she’d lost the taste for rebellion when the girl in the bed next to her - Helena had been on her left, Tricia on her right - when Tricia had refuted Aunt Lydia’s teachings and they’d taken her to the bathrooms and.

No one knew exactly what they had done. But Tricia had never spoken out of turn again, had barely spoken at all, in fact.

It had taken weeks before she could even walk properly again.

 

Sarah and Ofglen turned into the main street. There were other Handmaids, and green Martha’s too, all with the same shopping baskets. Other women wore the striped red-blue-green dress of the Econowives, married to men too poor to have more than one woman. They had to do everything; if they could.

 

Very occasionally you would see a widow dressed in black. Not as often as you used to.

There were cars moving slowly up and down the street, too. Not many. Fuel was expensive and scarce.

You only ever saw the Wives in cars, never walking on a footpath, blue veils shielding their eyes.

 

They walked past the clothing store, where the red dresses came from. A sign swung with a golden lily painted on it. There was the suggestion of words under the black paint, but someone somewhere had decided that even a few words on a sign were dangerous, and all the words had been replaced with pictures. Across the street is a sign with eggs, a bee, a cow. Further along the butcher’s sign is a carved pork chop, swinging on chains.

 

They enter Milk & Honey and join the line. Sarah feels the slightest nudge against her arm and Ofglen subtly motions at a table. Oranges. Sarah stares at them, the bright colour seeming to glow in the dim lighting. They haven’t seen oranges for months. She can’t get any - she has no tokens. But she’ll tell Bonnie about them and she’ll be pleased with Sarah for once. Oranges here means a victory somewhere else. She can’t stop looking at them.

Kira used to love biting into orange slices and making the juice spray everywhere. Sarah would pretend to get some in her eye and walk around bumping into walls. Helena would watch them and then laugh, once she figured out it was a joke. Sarah didn’t think she’d ever even seen an orange back in the orphanage. She’d never said - but Sarah had seen her face the first time she’d handed her one and it had sent a sharp ache through her. Kira had shown her how to peel it.

She blinked. They were next in line now.

 

No one talked. But heads would move back and forth, slowly, searching for a familiar face, an old friend or lover or relative, someone they had been in a dormitory with. They were all careful. Behind the counter Guardians waited for the tokens to be handed over. You couldn’t see the guns, but they were there.

 

The shop doors opened, letting in another two women clad in red. One was pregnant, her belly huge, pushing the red dress into a mound. There was a change in the atmosphere as the other Handmaids saw her - a mix of reverence and jealousy and resentment.

 _Who is it?_ Sarah heard whispered behind her.

_Ofwayne….no, Ofwarren._

_Show off_ hissed another voice, and Sarah bit her lip to keep from smirking. The voice was right though. Handmaids who had fulfilled their duty were not required to do the shopping, or anything other than stay healthy and do their exercises. But they are sometimes granted their whims, and if Ofwarren had wanted to do the shopping, and she was healthy enough - and this far along - then she got to do the shopping. And flaunt her belly in front of the other women.

 

Sarah wanted to flatten her palm over the woman’s stomach, as if to be granted a blessing. She wanted to punch her in the face too. She recognised that face. She’d been in the same dormitory as Sarah and Helena. Janine. She’d been awful - one of the Aunt’s pets, always tattling. And now here she was, round and safe and face fixed in a beatific smile, like she’d been studying the Virgin Mary.

She met Sarah’s eyes, and her own flicked down to Sarah’s still-flat stomach, and back up again. Her smile grew mocking as she swept past.

Sarah bowed her head and mouthed the word _bitch_ silently.

 

One of the Guardians behind the counter barked “Quiet!” and the whispering ceased, like a room of schoolgirls.

 

She and Ofglen handed over their tokens, and were granted their milk and eggs. Then left, Sarah taking one last glance at the glowing Janine, envious, and disgusted.

 

Next was All Flesh, where they exchanged tokens for meat. Sarah, chicken, Ofglen, steak. The meat is wrapped in paper, tied with string. No plastic bags anymore. No more overflowing cupboards of bag kept ‘just in case’. S had been a real hoarder of plastic bags. _Always need bags_ , she’d said. Sarah would open a drawer and it would be full of the damn things.

She missed them. She missed so many little things. She sees her reflection in the glass of the door as they leave and for a moment doesn’t recognise herself. For a moment she thinks Helena is walking towards her. Then she blinks and she’s just Sarah again.

 

Ofglen drew in a breath, as if about to speak, but the both of them came to a halt as a small crowd of people appears.

Tourists.

Sarah’s eyes are fixed on the women - their legs in sheer pantihose under short skirts, black hair that blows in the breeze, their smiles and chatter and skin and laughter. Painted toenails peek through sandals. They seem almost garish - too colourful, too alive. _This used to be us_ she thinks, _freedom._ She'd never worn short skirts, or any skirts at all, but she suddenly, desperately, wanted to. _  
_

 

She stops looking when the interpreter comes over to them. It’s said that all the interpreters are Eyes.

 

The delegation was from Japan, he said. They would like to take some photos of the two of you.

Sarah doesn’t meet his eyes, just looks at the ground and shakes her head, playing the part of the dutiful Handmaid. In her mind, she’s shoved the interpreter onto the road, tore her wings from her head and ran down the street, the Japanese women surrounding her like a bodyguard.

She could sense Ofglen beside her also shaking her head, hands tucked into the wide sleeves.

 _Modesty is invisibility_ , Sarah could hear the Aunts say. _To be_ seen _is to be_ (voice lowered) penetrated. _What you must be, girls_ (always ‘girls’, never women) _is_ impenetrable.

 

The interpreter spoke at the group, no doubt telling them that the women here are too modest, that taking a photograph would be akin to a violation tothem. Sarah chewed at the inside of her mouth, then peeked back at the women at the front of the group. Red fingernails, red lipstick. The colour looked so different on them.

 

The interpreter turned again.

 

“One more question,” he says.

 

Sarah nods, hesitantly.

 

“He asks, are you happy?”

 

She imagines the tourists lean forward for her answer - _are they happy? how can they possibly be happy?_ The women’s faces are curious in a sad kind of way, the men’s just curious.

Ofglen remains silent beside her, but Sarah licks her lips, wanting to say _of course not, we hate it, I’d run but they’d shoot me, help us…_ what comes out of her mouth is -

 

“Yes. We are very happy.”

 

It sounds less than convincing to her own ears, her voice strained, but the interpreter nods, his eyes carefully blank, and the tourists chatter, and then they move off, leaving Sarah and Ofglen standing on the footpath, staring after them. After a moment, she cleared her throat and said quietly,

 

“I’d like to pass by the church.”

 

Sarah nodded. Ofglen always wanted to go home via the church. The woman was proving to be a pious pain in Sarah’s arse, but what choice did she have?

 

They set off, Sarah’s fingers twisting around the basket handle as she thought about the tourist women, how they had laughed, and swung their arms, and talked to the men like it wasn’t dangerous. The red lipstick.

 

She bit her lip again and kept walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading - and for your patience! Sorry this is coming so slowly, but I have been consumed with other fics lately...


	4. helena

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helena is adjusting to this new life, and being far away from Sarah.

The first moment of every morning was the same. She was still in the dormitory, and she would open her eyes and see her sister in the next bed looking back at her, and they would both reach out a hand and squeeze, quickly, before any of the Aunts saw them. Every morning she would keep her eyes closed and stretch her hand out to the right, fingers reaching for Sarah’s. But they were never there.

 

Helena missed Sarah like a heartbeat. And little Kira. She lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling and wiggled her toes. She had been alone for so long and then she had been with her _sestra_ and _pleminnytsya_ and sort-of-mother. Her family. And then.

She stopped wiggling her toes and sat up in the bed, hands on her cheeks, one thumb edging between her lips, knees against her chest. Now she was alone again. It was strange how you could feel so alone with so many people around. The house was full of people during the day, but none of them were here to see Helena.

 

She clasped her hands in front of her face and bowed her head, asking God to look after Sarah and little Kira and even Mrs S, (although Helena doubted she needed God’s help. Mrs S was for-mid-a-ble, a word she had heard the Aunts use in the dormitory and which meant ‘she can be a right bitch’, according to Sarah.)

Her morning prayers done, Helena pushed the blankets back and sat on the edge of the bed, bare feet on the plush carpet and wiggled her toes again. This was a very nice room and she didn’t have to share it. The orphanage seemed very far away and very small now, but it loomed larger in her dreams. The dormitory had been like the orphanage, though. Lying awake in the dark listening to a hundred other women breathe and snore and cry.

But the dormitory had been bearable because Sarah was there. She would cry in the dark too, and Helena would want to cry, but instead she would reach out in the dark and find Sarah’s hand. She missed Kira more than she would have thought possible and she knew that Sarah missed her many more times than that.

The two of them would hold hands in the dark. Sarah would whisper _we’ll find her we’ll figure something out._ Helena would squeeze her hand very tight.

 

She sighed and got up.

 

The bedroom window looked out into the branches of a tree, and the leaves gave the sunlight a greenish hue. Helena had tried to open the window on her first day so she could climb out and sit in it, but it only opened a little way. The aroma drifted in through the gap, and it smelt like spring. Beyond was the back yard, with other trees, and flowers and little hedges laid out in tidy patterns. The gardens were as organized as the house. There was a flutter of blue below and she instinctively ducked below the sill before she remembered it was okay for her to look out the windows. No nuns or Aunts to put her in the cellar or lock her in a cupboard. There was a cellar here but it was brightly lit and warm and it smelt of soap.

 

Helena slowly poked her head over the sill and peered outside, seeing the woman in blue follow a little gravel path to the big flower bushes that she didn’t know the name of. Her hair was chestnut brown in the sun and was cut in a blunt fringe across her forehead, under an opaque blue scarf that rippled in the breeze. She cut flowers with precise movements, the scissors flashing. Helena followed the movement of the blades, chewing on her bottom lip. Her back itched. She gripped the edge of the windowsill tightly, her knuckles turning white. She breathed. The itching subsided. She stood up and slipped her fingers through the small window gap and just managed to stroke a leaf. It felt velvety.

The woman in blue turned, the shallow basket she carried full of blooms, and started back towards the house. Her head tilted and she saw Helena; fingers fluttered to her face, then she gave a small, controlled wave. Helena shyly waved back.

 

Then the blue lady was gone and Helena hurried to pull on her red dress and tie a red scarf over her hair. They allowed her to forgo the white wings inside the house, and it was breakfast time, which they allowed her to eat in the kitchen with the Martha. She only knew this was somewhat unusual because her shopping partner Ofthomas had whispered complaints about always having to eat alone in her room. Her name wasn’t _really_ Ofthomas, of course, just as Helena’s name wasn’t _really_ Ofdonald, but these were whispers between Handmaids and so none of it was real at all.

Helena liked her face - it was sharp and pale, with freckles and eyebrows the colour of fire. She thought that her hair must be very pretty when it wasn’t tucked away under a scarf and headdress. She somehow radiated a subtle anger that quickly turned to quiet submissiveness when Guardians or other officials were around and Helena just knew she was very brave, like Sarah. She smacked her spoon into the boiled egg in front of her, making the Martha jump a little.

 

“Sorry,” murmured Helena, and dipped her toast into the yolk.

 

The Martha gave her a strained smile. She was a tired looking woman, grey curls poking out of the green headscarf. She barely spoke to Helena, but it seemed to be out of nervousness rather than spite, so Helena tried to be very nice to her. It seemed to make her more nervous, but then she would sometimes slip her an extra piece of toast in the morning, with real butter, when they had it.

She wondered if she ate enough butter, could she just slip out the window crack? N-o. There was never enough butter. She made a face and crammed the last slice of toast into her mouth.

 

“Thank you Martha,” she said, politely as possible with her mouth full, carried her plate and glass over to the sink, swallowed, then drained her milk.

 

She’d laughed, in a disbelieving way, when they had told her that the Martha’s name was really Martha, but the woman had just nodded tiredly, so she'd stopped laughing and nodded also.

Both women snapped to attention as the kitchen door swung and the lady of the house entered. Helena clasped her hands behind her back and stood up straight. Martha shot up and busied herself with a cloth, wiping crumbs from the table.

 

The basket of flowers were sat on the bench and Martha sent to the living room to fetch a vase.

 

“The large Wedgewood, on the mantelpiece, thank you.”

 

One arm was folded across her chest, the other hand lightly clasped the small gold cross around her neck, as she studied Helena with sharp hazel eyes.

 

“How are you today, Helena?”

 

“Very well thank you ma’am,” Helena answered quickly.

 

A strained smile flashed across her face and was gone. She extended a hand and neatly patted Helena on the shoulder.

 

“Now, I told you you don’t have to call me that. It makes me feel like my mother.” There was a twist to her mouth as she said the word ‘mother’. “I wouldn’t be opposed to you using 'Alison', but we don’t want the other girls to be jealous if they think you’re being too familiar. Just call me Mrs Hendrix, alright?”

 

Helena nodded rapidly.

 

“Yes...Mrs Hendrix.” she said dutifully, shuffling her feet in the flat red shoes. Alison smiled again, warmer this time, then clapped her hands together.

 

“You'd best be going, Helena, before all the good cuts of meat are gone!”

 

Martha came back with the vase and sat it in the sink under the tap, while she fetched the token book, and handed several to Helena, who immediately put them in the big sleeve pockets. She fiddled with the zipper for a moment, remembering how Sarah used to fiddle with the zipper on her leather jacket, with her hair, feet always moving. Helena was so used to being still, trying to go unnoticed, that the perpetual motion of her twin had made her anxious at times.

She felt a twinge in her back, and bit down on the inside of her cheek, then nodded again, and left the kitchen, running upstairs to fetch her headdress, then back to the kitchen for the shopping basket (different to the flower basket, or the laundry basket, or the basket for potatoes), then out the back door to follow the path to the side gate. She looked up at the tree, patting its trunk as she walked past.

 

There was already a figure in red waiting at the corner two blocks away, and Helena hurried her steps. Like Sarah, she wanted to run, but not away from anything. When the two women were close enough they leaned their heads towards each other, creating a tunnel with their white wings.

 

“Hello Helena,” Ofthomas said, smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

 

“Hello Grace,” she answered, and tilted her head to the side, humming.

 

They turned and their red robes glided along the footpath as they murmured to each other, past the small, but still perfectly kept, gardens and dollhouse-houses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to write the entire fic from Sarah's perspective, but some things clicked into place, and here we are ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> I've been vaguely thinking about this AU for a few years, since I reread The Handmaid's Tale after watching Orphan Black, and quietly flipping out at all the parallels to be drawn. I'm sure there's someone who could do it better, and I hope they will after the new series airs!


End file.
